An irony of the California wildfires: "Global warming has all kinds of negative effects, but one of them is NOT the strong easterly flow that drives the big wildfires we have seen in recent years," because models predict the effect to weaken with warming https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/10/extreme-winds-in-california-and-soon-in.html …
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A problem with climate science becoming so politicized (mostly by denialist efforts on the right) is that any severe weather event is now conscripted as evidence of the catastropic impacts of climate change, whether or not the science supports it
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This has been a problem with Atlantic hurricanes, and we're now seeing a California wildfire version. Some people finesse it by saying "climate change will cause more extreme weather events like this one" which is not super honest in spirit but at least correct
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But for others, it's a tribal political question now. Either all harmful weather patterns are due to anthropogenic climate change, or you are a climate denialist. So Cliff Mass, who is an expert in these specific wind patterns, finds himself attacked as anti-science
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We really need to find a way to depoliticize the climate issue quickly, and focus the political battle to where it should be, on how to respond to climate change that everyone universally accepts as real. But things are going in the opposite direction right now.
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A corollary of "believe the science" is that you have to believe it even when it's politically inconvenient
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Replying to @Pinboard
It’s also fair to point out that a wildfire (bushfire in Australian) is like any other fire and needs fuel, oxygen and heat. Here, at least, the fires are always worst when fanned by strong winds, but the *fuel* has been supplied by record-breaking DROUGHTS. Caused by…
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Replying to @infinite8horizo
The situation in California is not clear cut like that. Our last real bad drought ended a couple of years ago, and we've had decent rainfall. Plus we're learning the American west has a natural history of decades long megadroughts worse than anything in the historical record
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Replying to @Pinboard
Fair enough; I didn’t mean to suggest it was always or necessarily the case, just that it only needs 1 of the contributing factors to be a result of climate change. (From my limited antipodean reading the greatest threat is PG&E, aka late stage capitalism, root cause of it all)
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Replying to @infinite8horizo
That's not accurate either. PG&E has been forced to defer maintenance by CPUC, and even a perfectly maintained power grid would have to be de-energized given the current weather situation.
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Relevent thread on CPUC here https://twitter.com/cjg2127/status/1187966825629249536 …
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Replying to @Pinboard
Ta! As usual, layer upon layer. I recall seeing stories how fires had been traced to PG&E infrastructure, but I didn’t know their works were controlled like that. We have monopoly QANGOs here running the high-tension distribution, complex interplay with other regulatory bods.
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